Thank you for your interest in placing an advertisement in our next issue of Tea Party Magazine. Our theme for Issue #17 is TRANS• in all its many shades of meaning. As a prefix or abbreviation, TRANS• can mean “across, beyond, through, on or to the other side, into another state or place, change, the opposite side of,” or can even refer to something further and allow us to experience new, in-between states. Here are just a few possibilities:

Issue #17, The TRANS• Issue—Highlights

TEA PARTY interviews visionary activist and writer, Maxine Hong Kingston, who tells about the meditation workshops she’s led for veterans, out of which came the anthology Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, featuring the work of eighty veteran writers. She also speaks about her 2003 book The Fifth Book of Peace, begun anew after a massive fire in 1991 consumed her house and the only copy of her manuscript-in-process, The Fourth Book of Peace. She’s the winner of the 1997 National Humanities Medal by President of the United States Bill Clinton, as well as the National Book Critic’s Circle Award.

San Francisco-based interdisciplinary artist, Michael Arcega, works primarily in sculpture and installations. His art, though visual, revolves largely around language. Born in Manila, Philippines, Arcega immigrated to Los Angeles at the age of 10. His work explores serious issues, such as globalization through history and historic icons, but often with a sense of humor.

Nora Barrows-Friedman has been traveling back to occupied Palestine to continue her photographic work and has put together a series of images that reveal both the devastation and resilience of Palestinian life. She is the senior producer and co-host of Flashpoints on KPFA/Pacifica Radio and a freelance reporter for Inter Press Service. She is a regular volunteer at the Ibdaa Cultural Center in Dheisheh Refugee Camp in the occupied West Bank, where she leads media workshops for youth and young adults.

Our Featured Poet will be Brooklyn-born poet, Martín Espada, who has published thirteen books in all as a poet, essayist, editor and translator. He has received numerous awards and recognitions, such as the American Book Award, the Antonia Pantoja Award, two NEA Fellowships and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Much of his poetry arises from his Puerto Rican heritage and his work experiences, ranging from bouncer to tenant lawyer. Espada is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he teaches creative writing and the work of Pablo Neruda.

Voice from the Street Interview: A San Francisco tenant representative for the Star Hotel—a single-room occupancy hotel for the homeless, Scott Stevens has been homeless or living in transitional housing for over the last 20 years.

Interview with choreographer Sean Dorsey: Founder and Artistic Director of Fresh Meat Productions, Sean Dorsey was named one of the international dance scene's most promising choreographers by Europe's leading dance magazine, BalletTanz, and was named one of the Top Ten in Bay Area dance by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Dorsey is the first transgender artist to receive a SFAC Individual Artist Commission and was recently awarded a prestigious Wallace Alexader Gerbode Choreographer's Commission.

In his autobiographical essay, That Black Sticky Stuff that Band-Aids Leave Behind, Felix Lucero—a San Quentin Penitentiary inmate—recounts a rare visit to an “outside” hospital where he encounters hospital staff and patients.

Paso Doble in Israel by Anne Ney recalls, as a U.S. Guard sailor in 1999, her three-day shore leave in Haifa, Israel.
 
Starscream—Transformer comic by Francois Vigneault